On Wednesday at 3pm, Sportsman’s Warehouse’s marketing team either failed to read the room or decided to take a calculated gamble on the outcome of Tuesday night’s events.An email announced the arrival of Manchester City’s new home kit for the 2026/27 season in their stores, describing it thus: “This is not your typical City kit.” That is both true and false. The jersey has done away with the diagonal bolt of white and gone back to a more traditional sky blue and white, which has been typical of City home kits since 1894.This jersey is “not typical” as it runs “through a full gradient of sky blue and is finished with a metallic monochrome crest”. The “match” jersey has a more pronounced fade or gradient from sky blue to light sky blue than the “soccer” jersey, with the former costing R2,499 and the latter a grand less. That the ad came less than 24 hours after City had drawn 1-1 with the impressive Bournemouth, giving the Premier League title to Arsenal for the first time in 22 years, was a little awkward. Given the numbers of memes and mentions of Arsenal “bottling” it by fans jealous of Mikel Arteta’s run this season and near misses of recent years, it was perhaps a mistake by City to use a picture of Erling Haaland staring into a fridge packed with bottles of milk in an advertisement for the jersey.But life must go on, and new kits must be sold. Arsenal launched their new kit on May 15, which “celebrates the 20th anniversary of the club’s move to the Emirates Stadium. It features two distinct shades of red, a bespoke crewneck collar, and a zig-zag wave pattern inspired by the stadium’s sweeping rooflines.”On Tuesday night they were already printing jerseys with the number 26 and “Champions” on the back, and the gold Premier League winners badge on the arm. Ah, the heady days of when Liverpool did that last year. Liverpool’s jersey for next season is a nod to the 1989/91 home strip worn by the likes of John Barnes, who featured in an AI-enhanced form to push it.Some Liverpool fans might suggest Arne Slot has been employing tactics dreamed up by asking a poor man’s AI to “find a way to saunter through the season” and got the reply to “sign an unfit player for over £100m, play a high press when the defence is struggling, pass the ball around aimlessly and annoy Mo Salah”. But that may just be my Liverpool bias showing.Arteta framed a blacked-out Premier League trophy on a wall at the Arsenal training centre some years back. He would tell the players to make the trophy shine. On Tuesday Bukayo Saka and Jurrien Timber rejoiced: “Light that up! Let me tell you something, 22 years they were laughing and joking. They’re not laughing anymore. It’s going to be shining bright!”The Arsenal training centre, rebranded as the “Sobha Realty Training Centre” (which sounds a lot like Sober Reality Centre), was built at the behest of Arsene Wenger in 1999 and paid for by the sale of Nicolas Anelka to Real Madrid. Arsenal will not likely have to sell to buy next season as they are on course to break the Premier League record for revenues with £760m, taking them to third in the list of the world’s richest clubs behind Madrid and Barcelona. If they win the Champions League that total will rise to £770m. To break that down, they received £192m as Premier League winners, £124m for the Champions League, £160m in matchday income and £290m in commercial income. Repeating their feats of this season will not come cheap. Wages will go up, bonuses have to be paid and new players bought.As Kieron O’Connor, author of the football finance blog Swiss Ramble, told The Times: “It is worth bearing in mind that revenue is great, but costs are going to be much, much higher too. They have spent around £250m on new players … so we are likely to see a fairly sizeable loss.”You will see a lot of Arsenal jerseys on the streets these next few weeks, many of them the new kit (just £2,499 for the match edition). They will not care their team will be in the red as long as they are wearing red. A new kit is on top of the Premier League.